Sustainable Urban Planning

4 Growth Pattern Management

Growth pattern management and planning is approached in this

chapter mostly as a multiplier process, combining conservancy

withdevelopment. What is remarkable is that in the absence of

much in the style of ‘regional’ growth pattern management in

settler societies, particularly the United States read as a whole,

there has been so much progressive gain. There are three contex-

tual points to consider:

• First and particularly in relation to the transpacific New
  World, the landed platform on which development took place
  was acquired initially by the immigrant settlers at little or no
  cost: there was literally no initial raw land capital outlay of
  consequence.


• Second: in the bygone days of frontier expansion and resource
  stripping in the Anglo New World, impressive community
  and family wealth was made from mining, logging and fishing, and first-flush
  pastoralism; the one-off ‘vent for surplus’ model.


• Third: respect and historical recognition has to be accorded the pragmatic
  achievements of day-to-day local government in the settler nations.

After World War II until the 1980s local and regional government agencies were

mostly left alone by central administrations to pursue incremental and correc-

tional policies on their own account and in terms of their perceived interests. Up

The focus with this chapter is larger than local, addressing development problems and growth
potentials in a cross-jurisdictional context. It bridges between sustainability ideals and the irre-
pressible desire for consumer growth, fashioning a synergy between economic activity, ecological
conservation, and social wellbeing. It is set out in two sections.
Information NeedsandConservation with Development Basicsare examined in the first
half of the chapter. The latter half addresses Macro Practice Patterns: Ownerships Interests and
Rights, Urban-Rural Patterning, Coastal Zone Management, Agriculture and Forestry, Tourism
Policy and Practice, Unemployment Alleviation, and Waste Management.

‘Regional planning is

different from other

varieties of planning in

that it is seldom related

directly to the exercise

of governmental

authority, but revolves

around the persuasion

of many independent

groups to act together

[within cross-

jurisdictional coalitions]

to pursue the

attainment of regional

objectives.’

Frank So, 1986.